I am looking for every alternative I can to cartridge guns whether it's shotguns or .22 rifles for hunting, particularly small game since that's what I tend to hunt more than anything else. One of the guns I bought a couple years back, mainly just because I wanted a military flintlock, is a Pedersoli French IX D Cavallerie carbine, essentially a shorter version of the French Charleville musket that was made for the French cavalry, artillery and even the sappers during the Napoleonic Wars. It's in .69 caliber but is very handy with a 29 1/2" barrel compared to the 46 inch barrel of the full size 1766 Charleville musket.
I decided recently to see how it worked with a load of birdshot since the gun is a smoothbore. I loaded it with 1 ounce, which is about the exact amount of what a lead .648" roundball weighs. I made a few paper cartridges with 80 grains of FFG Goex and tried them out at 30 yards. It patterned very well, well enough that I wouldn't have any issues taking this gun out squirrel hunting in the fall.